Iqaluit museum showcases 2,500 photos
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Iqaluit (Jan 08/01) - Photography, as a common way of chronicling daily life, people and communities, only dates back about 100 years.
Photo collections, gathered as a way of recording history, can include snapshots taken by amateurs and adventurers, as well as professional work by known photographers.
Across the North, these collections attract the curious spectators at visitors centres, heritage centres and museums.
"Such collections show the history and development of an area from a variety of perspectives." says Brian Lunger, the curator of the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum in Iqaluit.
Some of Nunatta's 2,500 photographs were purchased from the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Museum in Yellowknife and the Peary MacMillan Arctic Museum in Bangor, Maine.
"All the others are donations from people that lived, worked or visited here," says Lunger, adding the museum's collection mainly focuses on Iqaluit and Apex.
The oldest photograph, dated 1921, comes from Donald. B. MacMillan's first Arctic exploration.
Lunger says the museum has several projects for the modest collection. (The Prince of Wales collection contains 300,000 photographs.)
"Mary Clark, a volunteer at the museum, is working on a project to track the development of Iqaluit and Apex, from the beginning, following it's growth and how buildings were moved around."
Clark will use pertinent photos from the various groupings in the collection.
"It's just remarkable to see the changes that have taken place here over such a short period of time The people going from a traditional lifestyle 40 or more years ago to a modern lifestyle."
Nunatta's photographs, with copies accessible to the public in albums on a table on the second floor, attract all sorts of people, both locals and visitors.
Lunger says the museum hopes to get the funding to create a computerized database, and eventually go on the Internet.
Lunger, in talks with Nunavut's archivist Edward Atkinson, hopes "to find ways to make the collection more accessible, and create more interaction between the different centres in Nunavut."
The idea is to share the numerous collections, dispersed across Nunavut, via new technologies. Such efforts could become summer projects for youth, and even elders if they were interested. Lunger also mentions the possibility of collecting oral history from elders and having them identify people in photographs.
"The photo collection is probably the most popular attraction at the museum," says Lunger.
